FQ1: Your favorite sweet food? When did you last have it?
Do I have to name one? I like soft centred chocolates like peppermint and strawberry creams. I like smarties and jaffas and lollies like skittles. I had a peppermint cream the other day, and some skittles the other day too.

FQ2: Your favorite salty food? When did you last have it?
Either potato crisps or salami. Had crisps last sunday, and salami the other day at subway.

FQ3: Your favorite sour food? When did you last have it?
Sour. hrm. The natural confectionary company's sour worms are good.

FQ EDIBLE: What's the best thing you've ever tasted? The most horrible thing you've ever tasted?
Roasted meat that's been sitting at the bottom of the baking dish in all the oil. There isn't much better than that! :) Most horrible would be blue vein cheese which I had once, in 1987, and will never eat again.

FQ1: Any pets as a kid?
I got a budgie for my 7th birthday which I adored. He was called Bluey and could talk. He died three years later and I was devastated. We had a couple of other budgies, and some goldfish in a pond in the back yard.

FQ2: Any pets now?
Lotsa tropical fish :)

FQ3: Name your favorite famous pet from television or movies.
I dunno.. something that flies perhaps.. was Pegasus a pet?

FQ BEST FRIEND: If money and legality were not a barrier, what exotic animal would you like as a pet?
I always wanted a horse as a kid. A big parrot like a macaw would be cool too.

Even though I knew the outcome of the Amazing Race, I was still hoping Kris and John would win over Freddie and Kendra. Oh well. The next series starts here next week. So if I miss an episode I will *not* go looking for what happened, as I don't want to have the ending spoilt for me yet again! :)

And a happy fourth "birthday" to Alan. And ninth birthday to the new Pressy church which was rebuilt after the January 94 bushfires. And also nine years since the Port Arthur massacre.

I have spent entirely too much time using Google Maps today. I've been ranging all over the country (er, USA that is, Australia isn't very well covered) looking for recognisable landmarks. The resolution in some of the images is fantastic - you can see individual cars. The city resolution is often better than the country, but I identified rocks and the tunnels in Colorado National Monument, bridges in Oregon, the Boeing factory in Everett, buildings in Vancouver and Seattle, Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz in San Francisco, several airports, the Hollywood sign in LA, Old Faithful and the Midway Geyser basin in Yellowstone, Devil's Tower and the surrounding prairie dog mounds in Wyoming, Mt Rushmore under a light layer of clouds, and get this, a *toilet* that I remember going to in Badlands National Park, South Dakota!! I could relive my entire trip from last year from space!

In two and a half weeks it'll have been a year since I left. And I *still* don't have my pictures online :( It's so close to being done though, I should just *do it*.

With all my posting on moon photos, I neglected to post the other boring goings-on in my life (and I *still* haven't done the Friday Q even though it's the easiest one in ages).

So.

Friday Night

Video night at Campbell's. It was a late start and much pondering was done before we started, so it was quite late by the time we got on a movie (Napoleon Dynamite, which was just strange), and afterward we just chatted and eventually wandered home just after 1am (whereupon I took moon photos).

Saturday

Attempt to sleep in. Fail. No matter how late I stay up, I seem to always wake up between 7am and 8am. Did a decent chunk of tidying up, and lego sorting for stuff to sell on ebay. Took moon photos.

Sunday

Attempt to sleep in. Slightly more success. Church, then a bit of a chill out afternoon. I can't really remember what I did. Couldn't have been too important. Then Josh called up to see if I wanted to go to Sizzler with them. Which was utterly unexpected. That's twice in two weeks that lot has invited me out with them. Ate entirely too much, even though on the face of it I didn't eat much at all :( Damned all you can eats are just not good value with a stomach my size! Took more moon photos during the eclipse.

Monday

Attempt to sleep in. Some success. Watched the Anzac Day march for a while and saw my grandfather's battalion, including someone I know from my parents' church who marches most years. Wandered over to Luc's to help at the house. Moved 200 bricks 4 metres. And a bit of general cleanup. Came home and read more of Aurelius' and Pinky's blogs. May have got someone arrested at work today. More later if it actually transpired :) Then went to the parents' for a lamb roast. And suddenly it's 10pm. No moon photos tonight though.

Missed events

I could have seen Campbell every day this weekend. Him and Ric were going to Elixir which would have been fun to go to, but those things just take up so much of the weekend (and with petrol prices the way they are it would have cost me $15 just to get there and back). Then they were going to go snorkling today, which again would have been good, but I'd already said I'd help Luc out. Not that I couldn't have gotten out of that, but ultimately the hassle factor of snorkling put me off, especially since they were thinking of going to the northern beaches.

I'd left Starry Night running, and noticed that the eclipse would be visible here too! So took another bunch of photos. It wasn't a complete eclipse, and if you didn't know it, you probably wouldn't have realised it was happening. All that was visible was a slight shadowing on the lower right side of the moon. It's more obvious in the photos when comparing "before", "during", and "sorta after". Again, all 1/400th, f/2.8, 64 ISO, 200mm zoom.

With the moon being almost full (and if you're in America, you can see a partial lunar eclipse tomorrow morning), I thought I'd have another go at some moon shots, this time at 8 megapix instead of 5 which is my default.

I didn't bother taking my tripod down, it's a piece of crap anyway (someone wanna get me a decent one for my birthday?), and with high shutter speeds it wasn't even necessary.

This one is 1/400th, f/2.8, 64 ISO, same as yesterday actually, just at 8 megapix, full zoom (200mm equivalent), and a fuller moon.

Oh as I was going to bed this morning I noticed the light was out in the neighbour's flat next door. Which could mean one of several things..
1) The dude is back home and using the flat as per normal
2) The light bulb finally burnt out
3) The police came by, and whatever the outcome, the light was turned off. I'm guessing that since there isn't any sign of an industrial cleanup, there wasn't anyone in there. Will call them next week and see if they found out anything.

When I got home from the video night at Campbell's tonight, I noticed that the moon was very full and that it was right next to Jupiter. I thought that'd make a great photo. Except the tripod was upstairs and I knew once I got upstairs I wouldn't be bothered coming back down. So I whipped out the camera and took a couple of hand-held shots. Funnily enough the first one I took turned out the best.

It was taken at 1/400th second, f/2.8 (or f/2.04, I'm not sure from the exif info), 43.3mm (multiplied by whatever the multiplier is for my camera, nearing 180mm I'd guess?). I took a few others but either the camera moved too much, or was too over exposed, or just not focussed (when I tried it on manual focus at ∞ )

The first image below is what Starry Night says should be visible, then there's my photo.

Telstra sux. Truly. If you pay late, they slap a $5 fine on your next bill. You can pay by credit card, but they charge you a fee to do so. Their monthly rental on a couple of pieces of copper are criminal. It's like tripled in the past ten years.

I only make like three calls a quarter on my landline. The only reason I have it at all is for the ADSL. Does anyone in Sydney have a landline provider that charges less than $30/month rental?? Cause this is just getting ridiculous.

So tonight I finally remembered to go next door and try and get up to the flat that's had its light on since before Easter. It wasn't a security building which made it easier. Looks like they have five flats on each level, the one in question being the middle one on the top floor.

Knocked on the door. No answer. Knocked again. Nothing.

So knocked on the next door neighbour's door. The dude that answered said that an old guy lived there. Who couldn't walk very well. And they hadn't seen him for a while. This is sounding ominous.

As I left, I stuck my hand in the letterbox, and sure enough there's a stack of mail there.

Worried (although nothing anyone can do by this point), I reported it to the police and asked them to let me know what comes of it.

Worse case is that he's been in there for four weeks....
Or perhaps he's just staying with family and left the light on.

Tonight I spent entirely too much time reading Aurelius' blog trying to decipher all the place names mentioned. When I first started reading his blog, he was talking about moving from "Rome" to "Jerusalem". It didn't take long to realise that he was actually an Aussie, and then talking about seeing the footy at the Gabba clinched it. He was in Brisbane. Finally this post today made me decide to go back to the beginning and try and sort it all out. I'm up to February so far, and will refrain from asking my questions (scandal that made the news? legal saga?) to the end. I am guessing that Rome is Canberra, Jerusalem is Brisbane, although I have no idea where Judea and Ostia are meant to be. Probably one of them is Sydney, but I'll have to keep reading to get more clues. Unless Aurelius would like to share here :) The funny thing is, the deliberate act of renaming everything makes me even more intrigued about this dude. Even more so that some of the blogs I read whose names I never knew and didn't even realise that I didn't know them (eg mushroom).

So anyway. What I *should* have been doing tonight was the washing, changing the water in fish tank #5, doing the washing up and changing the url for my blog. Which I'm about to go off and do. See you on the other side (hopefully :) )

Apologies to those of you who were relying on my index.rdf feed for the past two weeks. I broke it when I tried to get BlogMap going. I fixed it this morning so should all be better now.

And don't forget, my url will be changing tomorrow to http://blog.kazza.id.au The good news is, this time it won't be a dns redirect, but a frameset one on the default index page, so links to old individual pages should all still work (including my index.rdf file).

Left home at 9am with a mission to get a new pair of jeans (or two). Two stores and eight pairs of jeans later and not one single pair that remotely fitted. They were all tight around the thighs and butt, but with massive gaping holes at the back, and a belt just pulled them in at all the wrong places. And the sales girls were saying they're all like that now. wtf?? And that they could have them taken in. For a $10 fee. wtf??? So I still have no jeans. Note to self: don't leave it until your last pair is almost totally worn out before looking for new jeans.

Then headed down to the 'gong to my little brother's, and him and Yvonne and I all headed out to Robertson for a Southern Highlands Bookcrossing meetup. Not too many people came, but a *stack* of books came. Came home with another half a dozen. Oops. Note to self: one of these days I should actually read all the books I've taken!

Wandered back to the 'gong, stopping at the big potato (aka the big turd) for a photo for my small big things collection. Note to self: really must plan a big things tour of the country.

Did a spot of shopping, where I indulged my coloured pen fettish and bought 72 gel pens (36 different colours) for $13, and a few Mr Men books I'd never seen before. Was tempted to get a couple of blue tubs of Lego, but decided I really do have enough lego for the moment :) Had dinner (me brother cooked up a delicious lemon chicken tonight), watched some docos on sbs, and rearranged the stereo equipment. Was tempted by the offer of speakers and an amp. May still get them at some point, or may just wait a little longer and go completely digital. Had dessert and stumbled home to arrive right on midnight, at which time I turned into a pumpkin. Note to self: must go to sleeeeeep

FQ1: What are some items of yours that are broken or needing repair right now?
My phone. Well it isn't broken, it's just crap, even after sending it back to Nokia *twice*. My landline is pretty crappy too, have been meaning to bring an old one home from work. The clock and light on my oven don't work. The plumbing in this place is a disaster - a couple of the taps groan if you don't turn them on the right way. erm.

FQ2: When something breaks, do you tend to live with it broke, repair it yourself, have a professional fix it, or throw it out?
I guess I tend to live with it wherever possible. I get my daddy to fix electronic things where possible. Otherwise I buy new stuff.

FQ3: Is there a childhood toy, family heirloom, or some other special item which was broken that you'd very much like to have un-broken?
I'm sure I should be able to think of something. Really. I get sentimentally attached to inanimated objects. My first car for example, which was kidnapped and murdered a few years ago.

FQ DESTROYER: What is something you would like to break intentionally, assuming you could get away with it?
Nothing comes to mind. I'll think about it.

So my day started with someone commenting on my 100 things list about how lucky I am that I know what I want in life (although I'm not sure how he got that idea).

It descended dramatically when I had to buy petrol this morning. The local Mobil was 115.9c/L, yet across the road it was 108.9c/L. The problem is, to get across to the other side of the road takes a good ten minutes as it requires getting through the same intersection twice against peak hour flow. After having to stop at the same set of lights three times I decided to bite the bullet, put $5 in at the Mobil and get more after work. I'm not sure which works better as a protest, not buying anything, or buying just enough to give them the message that I don't want to buy from them.

Then Marc sent this link round the staff list. You put your income in and it tells you where you rank in the grand scheme of things.

(big chunk of post removed, the thoughts had no socio-economic basis in reality)

I know damned well that I have it good in Australia. Every so often I have to convince myself that I do actually have friends, even though it doesn't feel like it sometimes. I probably have more money that most people I know. I know that complaining about the price of petrol between different petrol stations, and the ten minutes extra out of my life it takes to get a discount is among the shallowest things you can do.

I would simply like the ability to appreciate the good things and not get stressed out by trivialities.

Please be advised that my blog is moving house again, this time to blog.kazza.id.au. The people that want kazza.id.au also want kazza.kazza.id.au so neither address will work in a few days. Please update your links/rss feeds/bookmarks.

So two nights before Easter, I noticed that the light was on in the neighbours place directly opposite my bedroom and up a level in the next block of flats. It was on all night. It kept me awake because every time I looked out the window the light was on. Something was wrong.

At first I thought that perhaps the flat was up for sale or lease, and someone had left the light on while showing people around. It stressed me that the light was going to be on all Easter weekend using up electricity. Saturday I looked up on Domain to see if it was for sale or lease. No sign of it.

Then I thought that perhaps the owners were on holidays and had left the light on and gone away. But it's now been two and a half weeks. And school holidays have only just started.

So then I started thinking bad things. Like perhaps someone died in there and noone has noticed yet. Presumably the neighbours would have noticed the smell in the stairwells by now, so it's probably not that. But certainly a possibility. Was wondering if I should try and get into the building and have a look.

So the idea was to turn off the tv at 9:30, do the dishes, wash my hair and go to bed.

But then I had to fight with the crap that macintoshes leave lying around my file server. Fortunately only one macintosh, so I only had one user's directory to worry about. But instead of a ten minute job, it blew out to an hour while I tried to hunt down thirteen files that wouldn't copy from one disk array to another. Macs dump files with ._filename that must be some sort of place holder for them (because they think that files should actually be two files, not one, I guess in relation to the old resource forks). But if the ._file belongs to an empty directory of the same name, the file can't be copied. wtf?? Well screw em, they can just not get copied. If this user has troubles opening his files I'll tell him to use a pc.

This time, Campbell and I headed out to Coogee to go snorkling. We went in at Wiley's Baths which Campbell had been to before. But as we got down to the waterfront I started panicking when I saw the waves pounding against the rocks. Campbell was saying it was fine and "relatively" calm and I'm going "yeah RIGHT". So I was thinking that even if I could get in, I'd never be able to get out again. Anyway, he wandered up and down a bit looking for a spot for us to get in (and trod on a couple of sea urchins :( ) and he finally found a vegetation-covered shelf that dropped off vertically and quite deep. So actually managed to get in quite easily. And without being smashed up against any rocks :)

We swam down the coast a bit, but the water was quite murky compared to Long Reef. At one point swam through a big bunch of feathers, maybe from a dead sea gull or something, blerk. Campbell also managed to get himself washed up over a rock shelf and had a tough time trying to get back out into deep water. Glad it wasn't me! Yikes, it looked awful. So then started wandering back up the coast to where we got in. The sun was setting and we were looking straight into it. Could not see a thing. Managed to find the place where we got in, and, with a bit of help, managed to get out with all my skin and blood vessels in tact.

The thing about waves is that for the most part, the water moves up and down. So you can be quite close to the rocks and not be thrown around too much. It's only when the top of the wave goes above the level of land and the water has nothing holding it back and must move sideways that things get scary.

I still would prefer to go in from a beach though :/

Then went to the parents' for a lamb roast and a few rounds of 500. Mum was the loser. She also has a blood pressure machine, and we all had goes of it. I think mine was something like 117/67. Heart rate was 85 though. My brother's BP was very high which is a bit of a worry. After the games we had another go and he worked himself up to see what effect it would have on the machine. He managed to make it give an error hehe.

FQ1: Where's the most beautiful place you've ever been? What made it beautiful to you?
hrm I've been to quite a few beautiful places. Anything with snow and mountains and lakes in combination are often winners. Crater Lake in Oregon is definitely a highlight.

FQ2: Who's the most beautiful person you can think of? What makes them beautiful to you?
I've ranted at length about various beautiful men I've had crushes on, but possibly the most beautiful person I know is Chris, and not so much physically (although he's certainly above average), but personality-wise. He's the most "decent" person I know, and the most Christian non-Christian I know :)

FQ3: What's the most beautiful object you've ever looked at? What makes it beautiful?
Um. One that comes to mind is something I saw at a bush doof one time. It was a stack of polystyrene balls painted in fluoro colours. They were suspended on fishing line in a kind of network at all different heights. If you pulled one and let it go, they'd all bounce up and down. Damn I wish I had a photo (or better yet, a movie) of it. Didn't take my camera with me that night. Ric said he'd seen it before. Maybe I'll see it again one day :)

FQ LIST: Tell us ten more beautiful things! When you think of "beauty," what one thing comes to mind for the following words:music: John Williamsmovie: Peter Panbook: probably my favourite book - Star Trek VI by JM Dillard. Totally love that book meal: oh definitely roast pork with crackling and gravy and apple sauce and cheesy/creamy sauced potatoesgemstone: maybe diamond.. with ruby/emerald/sapphire for that lovely red/green/blue decoration :)flower: carnation .. although sunflowers are also coolweb site: a beautiful website? hrm nothing comes to mindartwork: nothing comes to mind for that either. Maybe the very cool picture my parents have of a sunset at a beach with a huge wave crashing over rocks. It was suspended above the oil heater and I spent quite a bit of time in winter months in front of the heater just looking its exquisite detail. I'm pretty sure it was featured in the Henderson Kids also.appliance: a beautiful appliance? maybe my toaster oven cause it's great for heating up stuff without having to put on the big ovenanimal: lots of birds come to mind. Or a gazelle or something.

Thanks to everyone that commented (and those mystery lurkers out there whoever you are :) ). It's nice to people out there have some sort of interest in me after all.

Ironically it comes at a time when I'm questioning the sanity of having this blog at all (or at least many of the posts I make to it). I was actually debating whether or not I should remove old entries altogether and start afresh. The only real reason though is that I really don't want my mother to read it. I think she'd flip out if she read it. I'd rather not have her knowing my problems.

I'm also starting to think I've bitten off more than I can chew with my feed reading. I've doubled my feeds in the past few weeks, and while I'm nowhere near Dave's 112 December count.. I think I'm only on about 20 active blogs, it seems like my whole evening is dedicated to the task of catching up on them. That, and too much tv watching, is meaning the fish tank still hasn't had a water change. I really should go do that before wandering off to bed.. at least it's Friday tomorrow .. and the rate I'm going the Friday Q will be up before I get to bed.. heh

Thanks to Ben for some cool links on Technorati and found another couple of links back to me (eg Gary, a fellow cadbury creme egg lover, and someone who stopped blogging a while ago) .. (as well as one that posted recently to my blog - Aurelius, and a link on yahoo from linux forums hehe).

But I don't get it! What on earth interests people about my life? All I do is whinge about crap. Honestly, I don't lead an exciting life, and I'm not the sort of person people get know in real life. It makes no sense to me!! As Pauline would say "please explain"! :)

Can someone explain to me how link:kazza.id.au in Google is *supposed* to work? Because it doesn't. I've thought it would be nifty to try and find some of the lurkers out there that link to my blog but may not post to it. But google doesn't list most of the places that link to my site :(

I also tried to get BlogMap going, however the help files are non-existant, so there's no explanation whatsoever on how to actually configure your index/feed so that you can submit your url to get a feed. The dude did answer my emails on the first day, but not subsequent ones, so I'm going to give up until he makes it a bit easier to use.

Campbell and I went snorkling at Long Reef today. It was great, except that we only had about 20 minutes of actual real snorkling time and the rest was just getting there and back :(

Didn't get out of here til nearly 2pm, picked up Campbell, then he drove my car up to Long Reef. It was 3:25 by the time we got there. Then changing time, then getting down onto the beach, then wading out to where we could swim. That was probably 20 minutes. Once in the water (after negotiating waves breaking over the rocks where I was trying to get in without getting sliced to pieces) it took me a while to relax and just breathe normally through the snorkel. I kept getting stressed that I was going to inhale a lungful of water. Once I realised that that wasn't likely to happen (unless the wave was breaking) I could actually just sit and watch the fish and seaweed. Saw a few interesting fish and a couple of big urchins. Campbell had somehow left his face mask at home, so he borrowed mine a couple of times. After probably 20 minutes we decided to head back in. Which is where it got messy. I couldn't get my footing when it got shallow and kept getting tossed around by the incoming waves. I got dragged across the rocks a couple of times and ended up with a couple of big scrapes on my hand and a few little ones elsewhere. Not fun. Managed to get out eventually, then spent the next *two hours* getting home :( I'm glad Campbell was driving otherwise I'm sure I would have been a lot more stressed.

Spent two minutes getting changed, and then out the door again for dinner. Then home and wash the hair and suddenly it's midnight.. whoops there goes 12 hours :)

As Dave kindly pointed out in a comment, I am the "blank one". However, while my mind is often a blank, and I'm sure blonde jokes were written with people like me in mind, that's not how I got that nick name.

It actually comes from my dad. He used to call me casablanca (kazza-blanka), derived from my name. Blank-one was a derivation of the blanca part. So he'd call me kazza the blank one.

And so a nick name was born :) And a pretty unique one too I might add.

I started this on April Fool's day, I really did. But I couldn't think of anything for the answers. Then my puta crashed. So a day late.

FQ1: Something foolish you've seen...
I see foolish behaviour on the roads every day. One recently was a guy cutting across two lanes of traffic and dodging into a small space between two cars. I'm surprised I don't see more accidents.

FQ2: Something foolish you've heard about...
"We're just invading Iraq because there's definitely weapons of mass destruction there". Dubbya is a complete tosser, I can't believe more than half of Americans that voted, voted for him.

FQ3: Something foolish you've done recently...
Bought a Nokia 6100, then fought with Vodafone for a month because it was crap, got a replacement and it's just as bad! >:(

FQ FOOLERY: Tell us of a memorable moment where somebody fooled, punk'd, or pranked you!
Well last year on April Fool's day, Triple M announced in their news bulletins that Sydney was going to host the swimming events of the Athens Olympics because Athens couldn't get their act together. They had various swimming personalities and even our state premier Bob Carr on the radio saying how wonderful it was. It didn't even occur to me first thing in the morning that it was April 1st. And Jim had heard it too and we were talking about it at work saying how cool it was. I looked up the Sydney Morning Herald website when I first heard about it and found it a bit odd that they didn't have anything, but thought it was just breaking news. It was only when I thought of it later in the afternoon and went back to the website to check and saw it wasn't there that it slowly dawned on me that I'd been had. Luc laughed and laughed at me. But at least I wasn't the only one that got gotted!

Campbell and I were going to go snorkelling today, but he had to help his flatmate move. We may go tomorrow, but today is such a glorious day to be outdoors. 28C and 32.5% humidity. Maybe the last swimming weekend of the year, so I try and get someone to come over for a swim.

Watching the final movie in the Airport Terminal pack - Airport 79 - Concorde. I've only ever seen this movie once, and the only thing I can remember from it was Patroni firing a pistol out of the window and doing all sorts of acrobatics and I was thinking "yeah right" (apparently the barrell rolls were possible, but 360 loops were not). The good thing about this Airport movie (and the previous one) is the glorious footage of the aircraft. The Concorde was such a beautiful plane. So jealous of Luc for having flown in it.

Sadly, according to IMDB, the same Concorde used in the movie was the one that crashed in France and signalled the end of all Concorde flights.